Chapter Text
Buggy's life to this point had been a series of mistakes, misdeeds, and misfortunes that — for some reason — always ended with him on the good side of fate. Not that he deserved the kindness, but, well...
He was a cat with nine lives, if you will. A thing that had a tendency to land on its feet, no matter how far it was dropped. A thing with claws and fangs and an insatiable appetite that bordered on sinful.
And sinful he was at that, too. Filled with gluttony, and greed, and vanity, and pride, and envy...
A cursed thing, really, then. That's what he was. Damned in his wickedness but rewarded for it all the same.
He hadn't been keeping track of all of the lives he'd run through, so far. And a man does wonder when his luck will run out (as all things do, eventually).
A cursed man, especially.
A stupid man who bought trouble just to pay off his debts.
A man who was caught red-handed and instead of being locked away, he was brought to confess his sins to his judge, jury, and executioner in person -- only, that was exactly right. Because he was led as a free man -- as a guest of the crown -- down the corridors and through the foyer, only to be stopped just outside the banquet hall and told that they were ready for him. Asked if he needed any special props for his performance and...
What?
“And for our grand finale, I present to you the Star Clown himself — the Genius Jester — Buggy!”
A light source is moved to blind him, and he thinks his time has run precisely.... now ....
There is a shove to his back, and he finds his feet moving ahead of the rest of him, causing him to stumble. The audience applauds at his introduction and follow him forward with hungry eyes.
Wolves, the lot of them, beaconing him like a sacrificial lamb to slaughter. And go, he does. On numb feet in too tight shoes. The echoes of bells jingling on his person the only friendly company to join him.
It is only when he is stood in front of the King and his table of advisors does he end his death march. Plants his feet firmly in place and momentarily forgets himself and proper etiquette and the predators watching because...
King Shanks is not looking at him, but instead to another man off to his side. He speaks to his companion with the same enthusiasm as someone speaking at a funeral, hollow eyes sunken in their sockets. He holds himself so that his left side is away from any nosey on-lookers, but it was common knowledge that preceded any shock that there was nothing to conceal there, anyway. What, with the absence of the King's arm, and all.
But Buggy, being only a mere man himself and therefore not immune to basic human tendencies, well...
It was considered impolite to stare. But, then again, the gig was up. Curtains had been called and he was due to be found out and hanged in less time than it took him to cross the expanse of the marble floor.
As it was, if this were to be his final meal, well... Like the glutton that he was, he'd eat every last morsal; savor the flavor on his tongue and swallow the remains on his dying breath.
Or some shit of the same.
He wasn't a poet.
He was a thief and a coward and a very lustful man, apparently. Not that he'd ever thought he'd say that in the context of the monarch, but, well, he was still young enough to justify new self discoveries while he had life in him. For whatever amount of time that may be for. The hand on the clock was ticking awfully fast since stepping into the castle, and now it practically ran laps around its face.
When King Shanks does venture to look at him, the moment of insanity is broken, and he remembers his body and commands it to dip down into a low bow that bordered on a curtsy, sans the skirt.
He keeps his head held to maintain eye contact, though, and the King's own brown ones were warm, if only because someone stoked the fire therein to keep it that way in the occupant's absence.
It was a look of a man going through the motions, and Buggy had never related to something more in his entire life.
Too bad that it is commonality shared with the man who would order the writ for his damnation. Have the palace guards drag him to the stockades and let the magpie mock him as they picked his bones clean.
Pretty things could still hurt, after all. Take, for example, a rose and its thorns. Beautiful, fragrant things, but if not careful you'd be bleeding the same red staining their petals.
The same red as would gush from the stump of his neck when the axe landed.
He was fond of his head, to be honest. And his neck. And, really, all of his other body parts. Particularly fond of their current placements and how they sat, you know, connected on his person.
Shame, then, that he'd soon be torn from him and fed to the hounds.
The thought sored the bile creeping up his throat and caused the lump lodged there to sinks down through his toes and pool around his feet.
The King's smile waned. Buggy panicked.
Performer he was? Yes. Absolutely. Buggy was manipulative and has been blamed for enjoying the theatrics maybe too much on more than one occasion.
The thing was — the thing, damn it! — was that he was wearing another man's clothes, under the guise of a profession that was not his own, in a room where people anticipated seeing a performance that did not exist in a context which Buggy was not familiar with and, well...
The silence that rips through the crowd is deadly.
Buggy takes a stolen moment to refocus his vision where it blurs, shifts his weight on unsteady legs only to find unstable ground.
He begins to wring his hands. An old nervous tick he'd thought he'd outgrown. He stops the mistreatment, only to replace it with him fiddling with the small ball he'd been able to sneak past the guards. An insignificant bump clumsily added to the innards of his frock by tearing the fabric at its seams. His contingency plan: A deadly little thing, should everything go tits up.
And everything, as it stood presently, had gone tits up, surely.
But it was meant for a more isolated setting. One with significantly less guards and, you know, not a mere ten feet from the reigning monarch.
Still, he wonders how long it would take to jump out of an exploded window and to sail far enough away to sneak into oblivion.
He roves his eyes around the expanse of the room and how cramped it was with bodies. The quick calculations do not look great.
“Welcome, Buggy, the Star Clown,” King Shanks says at length. He shifts in his throne and gives Buggy a quizzical look, something akin to an unwitting confusion and, yeah — that tracks. It is with only a marginal amount of sincerity — perhaps sarcasm was more apt, but, then again grammar didn't much matter with the threat of bodily harm, now did it?
The question was rhetorical. It didn't, thank you very much. Kindly fuck yourself, if you disagree.
The small smirk that tilts King Shank's lip upwards is not lost on Buggy, but it is a little terrifying, in the scheme of things. Especially as the other man says, “It is our pleasure to have you indulge the court with your act this evening. I extend my utmost thanks to you for your time.”
And, well, fuck him, right? His death sentences sounded like misplaced gratitude from the most powerful man in the East. From Red-Haired Shanks, one of the Four Emperors. The man, the myth, and the legend that was the King who now sat before a peasant like Buggy and extended pleasantries, as if that wasn't just the most cosmic bullshit...
He stops stills his hands at his belt, just above the tiny bomb concealed there. Resigns himself to face his current predicament head-on, then. He'd jump out the window as a last resort, later.
Now, though...
He was Buggy.
A trickster and a fiend. A master in his craft who had been in worst predicaments than this — maybe not in scale, but in potential for the same end result, at least.
A cat who needed just one more life to get out of this mess. If only his dumb, cursed luck could just last a little bit longer...
Buggy smiles to the point that he can feel the makeup smeared across his mouth crack and peal. He dips his head and flourishes a gloved hand and says the most unhinged thing he'd even proclaimed in his entire life:
“The pleasure is entirely mine, your Majesty.”
He sets his shoulders and grinds his teeth and steals himself like the thief that he is to do what it is that he does best.
To performs like his life depended on it because, well, it most certainly did.
Or, at the very least, to go out with style. With a flashy pizzazz.
And, so, he begins.